


Life, right here

by frumplebump



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: M/M, Short, Tendershipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 02:24:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1727660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frumplebump/pseuds/frumplebump
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...he’s mine. Or I am his. I still haven’t decided yet which one it really is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life, right here

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2005, posted here with minor edits for style only.

Life.

Right here, underneath my fingertips. Life—a pulse I shouldn’t be able to feel, because I am intangible, but I can touch him, because he’s mine. Or I am his. I still haven’t decided yet which one it really is.

My fingers are pressed to his neck, feeling that rhythm. This body is my body too, sometimes, when I need it, but that pulse is not mine. That beat resonates from his heart only. His heart—that one place I can’t get to.

My fingers move, stray away from his throat and up to his lips. They are parted just a little, and I rest two fingertips against them to feel that tiny warm exhalation. If it were anyone else’s breath—any other movement in the air at all—I wouldn’t be able to feel it.

I am curled up against his side, a perfect match from head to toe, flesh meeting the absence of flesh. He is warm. How do I feel to him? Am I cold? Am I pain? Does he feel anything at all?

I’m surprised he hasn’t woken up yet. I think it means he can’t feel me. He doesn’t know I’m here.

My fingers work their way up his face to his eyelids. I let my fingertip hover over the delicate skin; he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink. I trace the line of his eyelashes, of his brow, then I smooth my fingertips over his eyelids and make the gesture of closing the eyes of the dead, and still no reaction.

He’s never seen me. His own shadow, his own other half, his own dark reflection, and he hasn’t ever seen me. If he stared hard into a mirror, could he find me? Mirrors need light to work—could I even appear in his reflection?

I’ve seen him from the inside out. I’ve seen all his dreams, all his desires, all his fears. I used to laugh at them, until he learned to ignore me. I’ve seen him clutch his head and cry out when I talk to him; I’ve seen his soul shrink away inside himself when he feels me stirring.

I don’t think he wants to see me.

I run my hand down his temple, down his cheek, remembering what it is to exist. I touch his mouth again, rub my thumb over his lip. If I spoke to him right now, like this, outside of his head, would he hear me? Could I wake him?

Am I ever, truly, outside of his head?

“Yadonushi.”

He doesn’t move. His breath still flows slow and even over my fingertips.

“Yadonushi…”

I don’t know whether I’m even making a sound.

Slowly I pull my hand away, my fingers trailing across his jaw. I reach to his chest, touch the Ring that he wears even in sleep. He could take it off, if he wanted, whenever he wanted. He doesn’t.

He keeps that tangible reminder of me hanging from his neck always, and yet, right now, lying at his side, touching his face, I’m not here. I don’t exist.

I curl up small and return to the Ring.

(And then, from some place both within him and far away, I see him open his eyes and glance to his side and sigh.)

 


End file.
